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Comment by pauljurczak | Hacker News Reader

> their responsibilities lie with their shareholders

This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corporations was wildly accepted. What changed is the ideologues who became more vicious and took complete control of the narrative.

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Somewhat hilariously it's also often claimed that CEO's are not allowed to lie due to then being liable for misinforming shareholders.

Matt Levine's excellent Bloomberg newsletter "Money Stuff" frequently comments on this - search for the phrase "Everything is securities fraud": many reprehensible things a company does are possibly not technically illegal per se (or it's hard to prove that they are), but they do constitute securities fraud, and that's easier to prove and prosecute.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=money+stuff+matt+levine+%22everyth...

Are you saying it's okay to commit fraud?

They avoid making actionable statements. In this case, the CEO did not explicitly assign blame, so it would be difficult to call them a liar. Omitting is different from lying. Using vague terminology isn't lying. So you get stuck with all this corporate talk, where they act as if they're apologizing, but won't even really say what they are specifically apologizing for.

If the CEO of a public company owns 10% of that company's shares and 90% of their new worth comes from the value of that stock, I can imagine them caring a great deal about increasing the value of the stock.

This is what people are referring to when they say "shareholder value" -- diving up the value of the stock.

I was thinking similar things. I'm plenty sure they don't have any legal responsibility to mislead and confuse people which is essentially what they are doing. They might have a legal responsibility to say we are at fault if their internal investigation is still ongoing. But almost certainly knowing they are fault and trying to placate people and distribute blame is all about greed, lack of moral and setting up a false narrative of 'duty to shareholder'.

Sure, however BA is part of the S&P500. I would wager almost every American who has retirement savings owns a chunk of BA. As well as most people in the Western world.

As much as we would love to having Boeing stock plummet, it will impact most people even if they're not aware that they own it.

Does not the majority have index fonds, which mean that a drop for BA is rather minor overall and stock money released from people selling BA stocks will then be invested in other companies on the market?

You are correct they have index funds, and the people selling off BA stock _may_ be investing in one of the other 499 S&P listed companies, or they may not be.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act seems like a great step in the right direction to make this more clear.

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...

"Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted."

Holy crap, should I be on the lookout for black helicopters?

For someone having the same problem: https://web.archive.org/web/20190402011933/https://www.warre...

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